San Francisco’s downtown was unique in that it was very dense and truly urban well before the skyscraper era came about, and its design focused heavily on Victorian architecture. As a result, its design was more akin to the grand European capitals than to the metropolises we think of in New York and Chicago.
The outlying neighborhoods of San Francisco are still filled with lovely examples of stately Victorian row homes, but the downtown no longer has that unique design to it.
It’s interesting to imagine what downtown San Francisco would look like today had it not been destroyed in 1906. Perhaps a cross between the New Orleans French Quarter and the old boulevards of Paris? Hard not to think we missed out on what could have been.
CherryPieNTheSky
If I hadn’t read the title first, I would have thought this was somewhere in London.
old_gold_mountain
Digging around, I believe [this](https://www.flickr.com/people/bennetthall/) is the person who colorized it, but I could be wrong.
San Francisco’s downtown was unique in that it was very dense and truly urban well before the skyscraper era came about, and its design focused heavily on Victorian architecture. As a result, its design was more akin to the grand European capitals than to the metropolises we think of in New York and Chicago.
When the whole downtown district and surrounding neighborhoods were destroyed in the Earthquake and Firestorm of 1906, this entire district was leveled to the ground and had to be rebuilt from scratch. The resulting downtown is more similar to those aforementioned cities than to the grand European capitals. [(This is the same street today)](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7905003,-122.4022859,3a,43.1y,180.61h,101.01t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skToQAKrj2enodLaingGLTQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)
The outlying neighborhoods of San Francisco are still filled with lovely examples of stately Victorian row homes, but the downtown no longer has that unique design to it.
It’s interesting to imagine what downtown San Francisco would look like today had it not been destroyed in 1906. Perhaps a cross between the New Orleans French Quarter and the old boulevards of Paris? Hard not to think we missed out on what could have been.
CherryPieNTheSky
If I hadn’t read the title first, I would have thought this was somewhere in London.